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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26352118">double the pleasure, triple the fun</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/folieafuck/pseuds/folieafuck'>folieafuck</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Bill &amp; Ted (Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Homophobic Language, M/M, Past Child Abuse, Past Sexual Abuse, Psychic Bond</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 04:54:22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,222</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26352118</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/folieafuck/pseuds/folieafuck</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>They try to make this a game, too: <em>Who can last the longest without seeing the other? Loser has to buy slushies for a week!</em> But every time Bill’s about to jump out the window and scale the piping, Ted’s already standing in his driveway. There’s never a loser.</p><p>Except, the night after graduation, Bill wakes to the sharpest pain he’s felt in his entire life.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ted "Theodore" Logan/Bill S. Preston Esq.</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>36</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>193</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>double the pleasure, triple the fun</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It begins on Bill’s first day of first grade.</p><p>It isn’t painful, not yet, but it still makes Bill falter a few feet from the classroom doorway. An unfamiliar sensation tickles at the back of his brain, and a sudden need to kick the wood open and find whatever the source is blossoms roughly. He’s never thought much about his mind, nor what’s normal and what’s not, so he’s more startled than afraid at this mental anomaly. Curious, he forces himself to walk slowly as he pushes the door open.</p><p>Most of the kids are already here, although they’re shoving lunchboxes into cubbies and chattering amongst themselves. Bill processes none of this, instead whipping his head back and forth to locate the origin of the impulse.</p><p>He stops when he finds the boy.</p><p>The urgency fades into a fuzzy calm, and Bill immediately slips past the strangers to take a seat next to him. His face is obscured by black hair, stopping rather suddenly at his shoulders, but Bill can feel more than see his shy smile. Two giant holes expose his scrawny knees, and his t-shirt almost comically dwarfs his torso. Somehow, just laying his eyes on him has softened his scattered nerves and made whatever this day may be much more monumental.</p><p>“Hey,” he says, combing his own unruly curls behind his ears.</p><p>The boy copies the movement, and Bill is treated to a brief glimpse of sparking, engaged hazel. “Hey. I’m Ted.”</p><p>“I’m Bill.” Drawing his legs up to his chest, he asks the question that the sensation in his head is showing him. “Who's on your shirt?”</p><p>Ted’s grin splits his whole face, and Bill has the name a second before he says it. “Lynyrd Skynyrd, dude! The coolest band ever! You’ve heard Free Bird, right?”</p><p>His first answer is no, but even as his lips are forming the answer, muted chords start floating into his ears. <em>If I leave here tomorrow, would you still remember me? For I must be travelin’ now…</em></p><p>“Wicked, dude,” Bill mumbles in awe, and Ted laughs around that striking smile.</p><p>Before they can say any more, the teacher clears her throat, and they’re made to keep their communications to notebook paper. If Bill thinks about it, which he isn’t prone to doing often, he might decide it’s weird that he feels more at home staring at Ted’s tangles and nearly indecipherable words than he does at his house. But he doesn’t think about it, because he’s busy taking in the slope of his nose and the way his lips move when he reads words.</p><p>They become inseparable. Ted’s mom thinks it’s cute, Bill’s mom is indifferent to the whole affair, and their dads seem to keep whatever opinion they hold to themselves. They’re nowhere near popular, but when they’re brought up by staff and peers alike, it’s always Bill-and-Ted, Ted-and-Bill. At recess, they’re holding hands and sitting on the swings or the underused track, filling every moment they can with the other’s thoughts and ideas. </p><p>Bill hadn’t known much about music, since his mom only allows classical and his dad doesn’t listen to much of anything; but he discovers Lynyrd and Foreigner and Queen, all on Ted’s living room floor with their ears pressed as close as possible to the record player. Ted hadn’t even dreamed of starting a band, but when Bill starts dragging him to the music store every other day, they start fiddling with the guitars and sharing excited looks. These are the good moments, the ones when they can share each other’s joy and freedom and send it back with their own experience laced in the thought.</p><p>There are bad times, though. Bill’s mom leaves when he’s in third grade, closing the chapter for him with deafening screams about his father’s ineptitude and his own at being a son. He stumbles blearily to Ted’s, and the boy’s waiting on his front porch with a pained expression. Bill cries in his arms the entire afternoon, and Ted sobs with him, feeling every bit of his confusion, his loss, his anger. It’s nearly ten when they get a hold of themselves, and they build a blanket nest by Ted’s half-broken T.V. for a Burt Reynolds marathon. Bill stays curled under Ted’s chin the entire time, and they fall asleep not better, but comforted by the transference of the burden.</p><p>When Ted’s mom leaves the summer after fifth grade, it goes much differently. Ted’s just gained a baby brother, and they spend most days in ritual: sleepover, cereal, morning cartoons, play with Deacon, peanut butter sandwiches, Deacon, outside, dinner, Deacon, repeat. Bill loves him like his own sibling, something his father had made clear was not in the cards. Just sitting next to Ted when he’s bouncing him in the air or kissing his little head fills him with a rush of warmth and love; so it’s jarring when he wakes up in Ted’s bed with an aching heart. His body almost refuses to move under the weight of this sadness, but he props himself up on his elbows to locate Ted. </p><p>It’s pretty easy. He’s sitting in a ball on the floor by the front door, rocking a slumbering Deacon in his lanky arms. Bill’s chest hurts even worse, and he limps across the room, falling to his knees in front of him. Ted peeks up, and past the greasy, tangled mess Bill’s come to adore, he  looks the most miserable he’s ever seen him. “She’s gone, dude,” he whispers, and the crack in his voice has Bill wrapping his arms around the both of them.</p><p>Bill doesn’t have to ask. Ted’s brain supplies the horrible answer, and Bill starts to pet the back of his head like <em>his</em> mom used to on rare, rare occasions. “It’s gonna be alright,” he mumbles, and it’d sound fake and wrong if Ted didn’t know he meant it with everything he has.</p><p>Ted tangles his legs around Bill’s mid-section, and they hold Deacon between them until the sun rises through the windows.</p><p>Middle school is much of the same, with a few interesting twists. They start getting restless when they’re not together, during the two periods they’ve somehow been separated. These become their worst scores, because no work is done, no concept is understood; they only stare at the clocks, feeding on one another’s anxiousness until they can sprint down the hall and meet at their lockers. The teasing starts here, the ugly dudes with crew cuts shoving past them in the cafeteria and the whispering clumps of kids dubbing them faggots. It doesn’t bother Bill that much, but it gets to Ted, bad; so Bill starts becoming more and more resistant, until he’s punching someone fifty pounds heavier than him and getting a canine lobbed out of his mouth. </p><p>Ted’s dropping the tooth in his forgotten milk carton when Bill mumbles, “Why’th it bother you tho much?”</p><p>Usually, Bill wouldn’t have to ask. He would just know, because Ted would let him. But whatever the real problem is, Ted’s locked it up tight, and Bill can’t find it. Ted finds his eyes, and they have a conversation with no words, no thoughts. An image plays quickly in Bill’s mind, then, like his dad snapped the antenna again and the game’s been reduced to flickering lights. He can still make out the two figures in the dark room, however, and he can still read the word on the older man’s lips as the child cowers to the floor.</p><p>Bill gathers Ted up in his arms, which might seem hilarious to an outsider’s perspective, but Ted’s gangly self fits just right in Bill’s lap. He’s trying not to cry, the milk shuddering in his hand, and Bill kisses the top of his head with his swollen mouth. Bill gets the tooth fixed because the milk was right, because Ted’s <em>always</em> right, even when he’s wrong. After that, Bill makes sure they end up at his house nine times out of ten; the tenth, they plan around Captain Logan’s comings and goings. Once, they’re hiding in Ted’s closet because the man came back for his keys, and Ted tells him silently that the only thing that makes this okay is Bill. He can pretend it’s all a game, because he knows this isn’t real life. Real life is whenever he’s with him. </p><p>Bill kisses him softly, and Ted kisses him back.</p><p>High school is when it starts to hurt. Captain Logan’s on a rampage to make sure Ted isn’t ever with Bill, and Bill’s dad is coming home drunker and drunker; so their daily hang-outs are reduced to once or twice a week, not counting the times they see each other in class. And it fucking <em>hurts</em>. When Bill has to watch Ted slip dejectedly into his house, he has to bite his knuckles so he doesn’t start screaming from the pain. He’ll see Ted walking into homeroom, his eyebrows pinched and his mouth turned down, and he’ll watch his face light up the second their eyes meet.</p><p>They start sneaking out every night, using the skate park and the Circle K as their safe places. They try to make this a game, too: <em>Who can last the longest without seeing the other? Loser has to buy slushies for a week!</em> But every time Bill’s about to jump out the window and scale the piping, Ted’s already standing in his driveway. There’s never a loser. And when they clear the goddamned distance and embrace, they can breathe sighs of relief, because the burning and the panic melt away into contentment, and trust, and a word neither have said. They don’t have to.</p><p>They get a reprieve, a mercy, when Rufus shows up the night Ted’s dad threatens him. Ted’s terror almost overrides Bill’s anger, but not quite; he can see Ted’s slightly surprised at how furious Bill is, at the mental images that scan through both of their heads. Disgusting copies from zombie flicks with Captain Logan’s face shoved in go around a continuous loop, and only Ted’s fingers in his and his soft whispers of, “I’m still here, dude. We can fix it. You know I won’t leave you, right?” keep him from spitting blood.</p><p>He lets Ted’s coolness douse out his rage until he’s slumped against his shoulder, forcing himself to lift up the textbook and ask him another question. But Rufus shows up, and they talk to themselves, the ones with the giggles and brushing fingers. They get <em>time</em>, they get to have an adventure with one another and not have to worry about the torture. They meet crazy people, they do crazy things, and they’re pressed to one another in a phone booth on multiple occasions—which, Bill has to admit, is a very nice touch. Ted outsmarts his dad, which makes them both feel lighter, and they ace the report, which makes Ted practically leap into his arms onstage. That moment right there feels like the apex of their lives: they’ve proven themselves, they’ve won, and now they get to live happily ever after.</p><p>Except, the night after graduation, Bill wakes to the sharpest pain he’s felt in his entire life. He lets out a low moan of pain, falling off the mattress and onto the floor in a heap. He can’t focus on the agony. All he can think about is Ted, where’s Ted, I need Ted, please, it hurts, Ted, please. He’s just about to start crawling the long way to his house when a loud <em>crack</em> comes from his window. He wastes no time dragging himself up by his desk, almost ripping the lock off the glass. Ted’s standing on his lawn, the moonlight serving as a beacon to illuminate his beauty and desperation. He’s mid-throw on his second rock, but it falls limply out of his hand, and the broken sound he lets out reverberates in Bill’s skull.</p><p><em>The back door.</em> Ted disappears under the eaves. </p><p>Bill cracks open his door, and the second Ted’s visible on the foot of his stairs, he reaches out to grab him and pull him to his chest. They both start weeping, both from the sheer relief and the pain that’s somehow gotten worse, more punctuated. Ted drags them to the bed and they’re kissing, for the first time since that closet, but this is the first time it’s <em>real</em>. Bill’s lost in the feel of his mouth, the taste of stale chips and indiscernible smoke and <em>him</em>, and the rush of emotions neither can wrap their heads around. Bill knows with this kiss that Ted’s been terrified of losing him, that he spends the nights they’re not together clutching one of Bill’s shirts and imaging all of the things Bill would never do; so Ted learns right here that those thoughts are unfounded, that Bill would trade anything and everything to spend every second holding him. They’re crying harder.</p><p>It still hurts. Ted slides off his mouth to let out a sob, one not spurred on by their connection but by the physical torment. They roll onto their sides, their foreheads pressed together and their limbs tied, but it’s not enough, it’s <em>not enough</em>. Ted’s hand comes up to cover Bill’s entire face, as if he’s trying to memorize the feel of it against his skin, and Bill bites at his fingers and clutches his sides underneath his t-shirt. </p><p><em>It hurts so bad, Bill.</em> Ted starts running his palms all over Bill’s torso, his chest, his stomach. He claws at his shirt, and Bill’s sent the image of Ted splitting him open and crawling inside, and he wants it, he wants that, just to make it stop.</p><p><em>I can’t take it</em>. Bill grips the back of Ted’s head, shoving their lips together but unable to kiss, unable to do anything but touch him. <em>I need to be closer. Let me be closer.</em></p><p><em>How?</em> Ted’s thoughts are terrified, his essence slipping and sliding through the blood their souls seem to be exuding. They manage to rip off their shirts, their jeans, and Ted’s face hides in Bill’s neck as he presses him in so tight he can’t breathe. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t need to breathe, he just needs TedTedTedTedTed please. Please. Ted.</p><p><em>Please</em>. And as they think this at the same time, the small itch that’s been overtaking their brains for years comes to a turmoiled crescendo. The room is gone, the bed is gone, their bodies are gone. Bill’s entire consciousness is shattered, yanked from his skull and strewn into Ted’s with an impossible velocity. He’s Ted, and Ted is him, and their memories and personality and morals are tossed between them like Alex Lifeson’s picks. Bill is Ted’s desperate need for his father’s approval, the fierce protection he garners towards his brother, the deep-rooted fear of who he is and who he loves. Ted is Bill’s horribly compartmentalized anger, the worry hiding behind the aversion to his step-mom, his animalistic instinct to always be aware.</p><p>At the root of all of this are two pulsing lights, one red and one blue. Bill’s not sure when he sees Ted again, but in this limitless, bright place, Ted is placed in front of him. They touch one another with trembling hands, almost disbelieving the lack of pain, the intimacy they’ve been thrust into. The two things that hurt to look at, hurt to touch, swirl around the both of them, and they look at one another with unreadable expressions to anyone but themselves.</p><p>Bill takes Ted’s large, calloused hands in his. <em>Do you want to show me?</em></p><p>Ted’s always been something of an angel to Bill, but being in him, <em>being</em> him, he can take in so much more. He knows before he knows. He wants to give this to him.</p><p>
  <em>I do, but I’m afraid.</em>
</p><p>Bill kisses Ted, and it’s as if a deal has been sealed, because this heavenly place is sucked away, and he’s bathed in harsh, pink light. His flesh is nowhere to be found, but he can take in this scene as if he were a well-situated ghost: the bare shelves, the creaking staircase, the sad Easter eggs congealing on the table. He feels himself being pulled upwards, and his attention is focused on the basket upturned on the steps: candies and chocolates, strewn to the carpet. The distant sound of screaming is heard, and as soon as he registers it, he’s dragged all the way to Ted’s room.</p><p>It looks similar, the only difference being the bedsheets and the posters. He doesn’t have time to revel in the pleasant parts of Ted’s childhood, however, because the source of the screaming is Captain Logan, and Ted is on the floor. He realizes this is the memory Ted had shown him when that dickweed had knocked his tooth out, but the clip he’d seen had been heavily edited. Ted’s father is backhanding him across the face, and his furious voice is overshadowed, to Bill, by Ted’s fevered tears. </p><p>“You ruin everything!” he’s barking, and smacks Ted again. His tiny head ricochets backwards, and he clutches his gushing nose with pure fear in his eyes. “You’re the reason your mom left, you little fucking faggot! And now you’re going to ruin your brother’s first Easter? Everything has to be about you, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it?!”</p><p>Bill wants nothing more than to lean down and strangle the bastard, but he’s immobile in his apparitional viewing box. This horrible moment goes on, until Captain Logan spits on the ground in front of him. “Clean this shit up,” he sniffs, gesturing broadly to the scattered sweets before tromping down to his own room.</p><p>Ted sits on the floor for a while, pulling his hand back a few times to gape at the blood. Before he can rise, however, Bill feels his imprisonment relent. He flies to the ground, cupping Ted’s cheeks in his non-existent hands. <em>Don’t listen to him</em>, he whispers, confident Ted is hearing him, somewhere, someway. <em>You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. You didn’t deserve him, you understand? You deserved the kind of father you’ll be one day.</em></p><p>Slowly, that familiar, shy smile finds its way onto Ted’s face, and the scene fades back to their newfound safe place. Ted’s cheeks are wet, and he’s clutching Bill’s fingers in his like a vice. Bill's aware he wants to ask if he means it, but the second he thinks it, he knows he does. Bill holds him, and his skinny self fits as well in his small frame as he always has.</p><p>They pull their heads back, and Ted points to the tumbling light of quivering blue. <em>Can I?</em></p><p>Bill’s fear is instant, and Ted draws him in close, like they’d tried on his bed. <em>What is it?</em></p><p><em>It’s bad, dude.</em> Bill is shaking uncontrollably, although he’s trying to let Ted see him, to let him know this revolting, rotten secret. <em>It’s really bad.</em></p><p>Ted kisses him, and it’s only that chapped, comforting mouth that keeps him off the brink of insanity. <em>If it is, it won’t be because of you.</em></p><p>Bill can’t argue with that, not here. He wants Ted to know. With that thought, they’re in a cold, navy-tinted room. </p><p>The dining table is covered with his mom’s poor attempt at a Thanksgiving dinner. He remembers joking that she didn't burn the turkey this time, and she’d laughed and rustled his hair, because she hadn’t started drinking yet. His dad’s tucking into his plate before saying Grace, and he waits for the beration from somebody in attendance. Instead, his vision is obstructed by the looming face of his grandmother, and he’s seized by a terror he can’t explain.</p><p>“William,” she calls, the leather of her voice grating Bill’s senses. “Do you have a kiss for your granny?”</p><p>He doesn’t know why, but he shakes his head rather violently. Her face doesn’t change from it’s amused expression, but the response from his father is quick. “William S. Preston!” he shouts, the fistful of cornbread dressing dropping to the table. “You kiss your grandmother this instant!”</p><p>He shakes his head again, now shutting his eyes to block out her face, her smell, the thing he’s forced himself to forget rearing up to paralyze him. Before his dad can continue, she straightens with a wave. “Boys always start thinking they’re too old to kiss their grannies, Ian.” She takes her seat with a matriarchal flourish. “I don’t mind.”</p><p>The rest of dinner goes on dreadfully slowly, and Bill’s just started to slip up to his room when that painful tone beckons him, “William? Come here, sweetheart.”</p><p>In the dining room, surrounded by adults, he’d had the guts to deny her the kiss. He didn’t know why, except he <em>does</em>, but...he can’t. He walks into the parlor, and his grandmother is perched on a loveseat. The very sight of her makes him want to cry.</p><p>“William,” she drawls, a finger curling up, and he follows it in his shock. He’s at her feet, now, and he can make out every flower on her dress. “I came all this way just to see you. Let Granny give you a <em>real kiss</em>, now. Come up here.”</p><p>He doesn’t know why, but he does. He crawls up in her lap, the blue overtaking his mind, his galloping heart. She’s right in his face now, and she reaches up her scraggly arms, and she, she, she—</p><p>
  <em>Bill.</em>
</p><p>Granny’s gone. He’s sitting in the chair by himself, trying to hide his tears. He hurts. He’s confused. He’s so scared. </p><p>Two large, calloused hands cup his face, and he can’t see him, but he knows he’s here. He’s always been here. <em>It wasn’t your fault. Nothing about you could ever be created by her. It’s never going to happen again, and I don’t see you any differently. I love you.</em></p><p>Ted’s arms are around him again, and they’ve both fallen apart. The lights are gone, and all around them are reels of their favorite memories. The first Wyld Stallyns band practice, when they’d sounded so bad but didn’t care, had reveled in it; skating just as poorly, kissing each other’s scrapes and laughing at the other’s palpable embarrassment; the kiss in the closet, knowing then and there that it was all going to be okay. Bill knows this now, just as Ted can feel it winding through the fibre of his being. They’re going to be okay.</p><p>They’re back in the bed, and it takes them a few substantial minutes to recall how to operate a body. When they do, Bill crawls on top of Ted and kisses him with everything he has. Somehow, this feels even rawer than the first and the second. That overwhelming pain is gone, replaced with the soft, fuzzy warmth they’d felt that day as children. Bill pulls back, allowing himself to really see his boy, to wrap himself up in his pretty face. He isn’t going anywhere. He knows the dark side of his soul, and he knows his, and they love each other even more because of it.</p><p>Ted sits up, winds his arms around Bill’s waist, and places his lips to his forehead. “You got closer, dude,” he mumbles happily, and Bill dissolves into sweet laughter.</p><p>“We did,” he hums, tucking his fingers against the back of Ted’s scalp to grip at his hair. </p><p>It isn’t the same, after that, but in the best way possible. They still feel one another, even a city apart, and they’re teased often for the long conversations they share with a few blinks. They buy an apartment together, not because it’d hurt not to, but because Bill’s kind of digging waking up every morning to Ted’s non-pained, non-heinous face. The band gets better; they don’t trip over one another’s ideas, they share them on notebook paper. Ted has to read his lyrics aloud more often than not. </p><p>The most excellent improvement, in Bill’s mind, is the way Ted kisses him. It’s still him, his taste; but instead of having to process both reactions, he can figure out his own, and delight in his adoration. The physical ways he can easily make Ted whine, giggle, sing, are all of his own design, and Ted’s more than happy to adapt and to teach him his own.</p><p>They’re still Bill-and-Ted, Ted-and-Bill. He doesn’t think that’s ever going to change, and doesn’t want it to. But it’s nice to be Bill when Ted’s fast asleep, and he can stroke his hair and whisper sweet nothings without waking him. He knows, like he knows everything about him, that Ted likes being Ted when Bill’s lost in his music, likes being able to think whatever he damn well wants to about him. That might even make them both a little hot.</p><p>Thanks to this progression, they’re able to save the world and reunite the universe. Not for the tunes. Not for the social upheaval. They become what they become because they learned how to separate and how to come together, like a pair of triumphant atoms finally mitigating.</p><p>Bill tells him not to include this in the biography, later, but Ted knows he doesn’t mean it.</p><p>Just like he knows everything about Bill.</p>
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